Despite playing in front of a vociferous home crowd at Santa Rosa Sports Complex, the two-time champions secured their second win with ease, having defeated Thailand 62-42 yesterday.

An Najwa Azizan, Malaysia’s first netballer to play in a foreign league, said today’s outing was far better.

“Our gameplay against Thailand was a bit scrappy, but we saw improvement in the second game,” the Greater Western Sydney Fury player told reporters.

Coach Tracey Robinson added: “We wanted to be better than yesterday and we did that.”

Malaysia next face Brunei on Thursday before concluding the round robin stage against archrivals Singapore a day later.

In the three editions where netball have been contested, Malaysia bagged gold twice, both as hosts in 2001 and 2017.

Singapore won the other edition (2015) when they were hosts.